Home Business

For many, running a successful home-based business can be a dream--no boss, no commute, no dress code. But the dream can quickly turn into a nightmare for those unaware of strategies for success, rules and regulations. To address these issues, the Conejo Valley Chamber of Commerce has formed a new committee for home-based businesses. "More people than ever are thinking about running their own business," said Steve Rubenstein, president of the chamber.

Airbnb Inc., the short-term home rental service for travelers, has been issued a subpoena from New York prosecutors. State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman's office is investigating whether people who put units on the Airbnb website are complying with state rental laws, Bloomberg News reported, citing an unidentified person familiar with the matter. Airbnb, which has become increasingly popular in Southern California, allows people to rent homes and apartments on a short-term basis as an alternative to hotels.

The City Council on Wednesday approved one of the remaining pieces of Councilwoman Laura Chick's effort to regulate home-based businesses, extending an amnesty period for such businesses until Sept. 5. In April, the council approved Chick's motion to extend the amnesty from June 5 to Sept. 5. Wednesday's vote made it official. Los Angeles residents who work at home must register with the city, paying a $25 fee plus a tax that is assessed according to their type of work.

The home entertainment business is growing again, albeit slowly, despite the fact that people continue to spend less on DVDs. After years of declines, total consumer spending on movies for home use grew 2% in the first half of the year to $8.63 billion. People increasingly spent money to access or own digital copies of movies, which helped make up for declining sales of DVDs and Blu-ray discs. A 15% increase in sales of more expensive Blu-rays helped offset an overall decline in disc sales of about 5%. FULL COVERAGE: Home Entertainment Most of the business went to online retailers Amazon.com Inc., Apple Inc.'s iTunes store, Best Buy Co.'s CinemaNow, Google Play and Wal-Mart Stores Inc.'s Vudu.

The Los Angeles City Council on Wednesday approved one of the remaining pieces of Councilwoman Laura Chick's effort to regulate home-based businesses, extending an amnesty period for such businesses until Sept. 5. In April, the council approved Chick's motion to extend the amnesty from June 5 to Sept. 5. Wednesday's vote made it official. Los Angeles residents who work at home must register with the city, paying a $25 fee plus a tax that is assessed according to their type of work.

The City Council rescinded an ordinance requiring special city permission for some home businesses. A report by Community Development Director Robert Dawson said the ordinance, adopted last year, has resulted in complaints by home business applicants. Dawson said that the ordinance, requiring a conditional-use permit for home businesses within 300 feet of a main street or commercial or manufacturing zone, was intended to prevent houses in commercial areas from turning into stores.

On the same day home businesses became legal, the Los Angeles City Council voted Wednesday to forgive the penalties for those businesses that have failed to pay taxes. The amnesty program, which began Wednesday and extends through June 5, applies to all tax penalties that home business owners have failed to pay in the past. In November, the City Council voted to legalize home-based businesses, bringing the city in line with 77 others in the county that have already recognized such operations.

After a long debate, the Los Angeles City Council formally endorsed a measure Wednesday to legalize and regulate home businesses. The ordinance, which is supported by Mayor Richard Riordan, will bring Los Angeles in line with 77 other cities in the county that have already legalized home business. The vote culminates more than a decade of debate in Los Angeles, dating to 1986 when the late Councilman Howard Finn first proposed a home business law.

Attorneys for the Writers Guild of America's West Coast division have delivered a strongly worded, 23-page legal brief to City Councilwoman Laura Chick, who represents the west San Fernando Valley and has led the city's drive to regulate home-based businesses. The guild is joining others in what city officials call the "creative community"--primarily home-based artists and writers--in demanding an exemption from city business taxes.

"Are Writers More Equal Than Others?" (Commentary, Sept. 8), by Joel Fox, president of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers' Assn., asserts that writers who work at home expect special privileges. I have been a writer of fiction for some years, and I work at home. I did not know, however, that I was supposed to register with the city clerk's office as a home-based business and pay a city business tax until I read about it in The Times last April. Then I learned that a writer working at home must pay an annual $25 registration fee plus a minimum tax of $106.

Television is an unusually fluid art. Because a TV series exists in time, over time, change and revision are in its blood. It's as if painters went back to work on their paintings after they were hung in museums. Series of films or books based on repeating characters also evolve - Sean Connery, meet Daniel Craig - but their progress is relatively glacial. TV series are fruit flies by comparison, mutating not just from season to season but week to week. The inauspiciously titled "Family Tools," which premieres Wednesday on ABC, is based on a middling British series called "White Van Man. " On the basis of its pilot episode, taken alone, I might have warned you to be out of the house Wednesday night in case you might see it even by accident.

A Los Angeles County Superior Court judge on Wednesday reduced the bail for Scott Schenter, a former county appraiser accused of falsifying documents and unlawfully lowering property values by $172 million on multimillion-dollar homes and businesses. Schenter's bail was reduced from $1.5 million to $100,000. Schenter was arrested in May and is facing 60 felony counts for allegedly falsifying records; he is at the center of a criminal probe involving the county assessor's office.

The gig: Ed Kushins, 65, is the founder and president of HomeExchange.com, based in Hermosa Beach. It is one of the nation's largest members-only home exchange businesses. What is a home exchange? With 43,000 members, HomeExchange helps participants reach agreements to swap their homes for vacations or business trips. The deal provides each with a house or apartment, and it eliminates the need to pay for hotel rooms. Members pay about $120 per year for access to the company's member database.

Egypt suffered the deadliest unrest since President Hosni Mubarak's ouster when clashes Wednesday between Muslims and Coptic Christians left 13 dead and 140 injured. The bloodshed, on the edge of a Cairo slum, renewed concern about the government's willingness to protect the Christian minority. Army units intervened only after Muslims set fire to homes and businesses. "The people attacked us and the army was helping them. The army was among those who shot at us," said Massoud Younan Abde Mach, a 47-year-old Christian who works as a garbage collector.

Major portions of Brisbane resembled a watery ghost town Thursday as muddy waters from the overflowing Brisbane River inundated Australia's third-largest city, part of massive flooding throughout Queensland state that has left officials and residents reeling. In Brisbane, a city of 2 million, 11,900 homes and 2,500 businesses were completely flooded, an additional 14,700 houses and 2,500 businesses were at least partly covered by water, and 120,000 houses were without power, Mayor Campbell Newman said.

Septic tanks and leach pits could soon be endangered commodities in Malibu. On Tuesday, the State Water Resources Control Board is slated to vote in Sacramento on a proposal to require the coastal community to install its first central sewer system, cease permits for new septic setups and phase out hundreds of existing small-scale systems by 2019. Chronic pollution in Malibu Creek and Lagoon and Surfrider Beach — and repeated failures by Malibu to address the problem — spurred the Los Angeles Regional Water Quality Control Board last November to propose the septic ban for a large area of central and eastern Malibu.

Long before the information superhighway was much more than a two-lane street, Americans had begun to fuel a trend of telecommuting and home-based businesses. In 1984, some 6 million individuals were working from home, either full- or part-time. Now, however, thanks partly to vast gains in technology and electronic communication, 45 million people work from home--and their ranks are rising by tens of millions each year.

For those who seek cosmetic procedures but demand discretion -- or just want greater convenience -- there's an option. Destinations Medical Spa bills itself as Southern California's first doctor-managed mobile cosmetic care service, offering board-certified doctors who provide services such as Botox injections and laser treatments to clients in the privacy of their homes or offices. "Our doctor shows up in a nondescript SUV and sets up everything in 10 minutes," said Skylar Evans, Destinations' chief operating officer.

House robberies: up by 27% for the year ending in March. Business robberies: up 41%. Sex crimes: up 10.1%. Carjackings: up 5%. "The crimes you fear most are on the rise," was how one South African newspaper put it. No set of numbers is more politically sensitive here than the annual crime statistics, which were due for release before the April parliamentary elections, but were delayed until last week.Police Commissioner Bheki Cele, a close ally of President Jacob Zuma, has the difficult task of turning around the nation's surging crime rate -- which affects South Africans in poor townships and informal settlements more than those in wealthy suburbs.